The game of golf includes the use of a variety of golf clubs to propel the contestant's golf ball toward and ultimately into the designated golf holes. Most of the golf clubs are designed to loft a struck golf ball into the air for some considerable distance. The area of the golf course immediately surrounding each golf hole is the green, a plot of carefully tended turf to facilitate the use of another type of golf club, the putter. A putter is designed with relatively little loft, or even no loft at all, to roll a struck golf ball across the green in the direction of the hole. Because putting strokes will typically comprise from one-third to one-half of a contestant's strokes in any given round of golf, a contestant's skill at putting is one of the most important aspects of the game. Considerable attention has therefore been devoted to putter design and as a result there are many putters known in the prior art.
Most putter designs have been developed to improve the accuracy of contestants' putting. These designs focus on facilitating the contestants' alignment of the putter; minimizing torque or twisting of the putter head on contact with the golf ball; minimizing the turning moment if the golf ball is not struck precisely on the center of gravity of the putter; and facilitating the contestants' swinging of the putter head in the manner of the arc of a pendulum. In virtually all cases, prior art putter designs address the physics of putting as if the golf course greens were a smooth, firm, planar surface such as a pool table rather than the somewhat less perfect topography of real turf.
In the real world, there is frequently a problem with the lie or resting place of a golf ball in the green where it has to be putted. Gravity usually causes the golf ball to settle into a low spot in the green as opposed to a high spot and this dictates that putter heads should be lofted slightly in order to lift the golf ball from a low resting place. A typical putter head will have a loft of 1.degree. to 6.degree. from the vertical and this loft imparts a backwards spinning rotation to the golf ball as it is struck and lifted from its resting place. The "backspin" enhances the tendency of the golf ball to bounce or skip as the ball first contacts the surface of the green until its forward movement and friction with the surface of the green causes the spin of the golf ball to reverse and the ball then spins forward in the direction of the ball's path.
The present putter design is intended primarily to reduce the amount of backspin on a putted golf ball while still allowing the golf ball to be lifted from a low spot on the green. The reduced backspin allows for smoother and more predictable putting. In the preferred design of the present improved putter design, a resilient material such as silicone is also used to reduce vibrational shock transmission from ball impact through the putter shaft to the hands of the golfer. The improved feel from this reduced shock allows golfers to putt more smoothly and more confidently.